“Audi has an extremely complicated fate. The founder of the company, August Horch, called his first business A. Horch & Cie (Horch translates from German as “listen”) back in 1899. Ten years later, however, August was driven out of his own company and forced to start a new one. At first he used the old name, Horch, but his former partners took the brand from him through the courts.
The new name was born by chance: during a conversation between Horch and his partner Franz Fikentscher, the latter’s son was sitting and learning Latin. At the end of the conversation, he suggested translating “Horch” into Latin and naming the company “Audi.
At first, the company name was the logo. The world-famous rings appeared much later: in the thirties, there were hard times for many automakers and they had to unite to survive on the market. Audi merged with its main competitors: DKW, Wanderer and Horch.
After such significant changes, the new company needed a logo. At first, it was a chain of linked rings, and the name of one of the four companies was printed in each of them. But such a logo looked too crowded and unwieldy, so it was decided to simplify it. As a result, only four rings were left. And if at first they were just a chain, later they started to look like separate rings overlapping each other.
This was not the last restyling of the logo: in August 2009 it was redesigned again. The rings now look wider, although they are the same thickness and area as the old ones. The new version of the logo is more elegant and embossed.